The lootbox monetization model is coming under attack. The biggest beefs are coming from players disgruntled about in-game items in Star Wars: Battlefront II. But when it comes to games, this model goes all the way back to Magic: The Gathering (and if we go further in time, we're looking at good ol' baseball cards).

Inside, as outside, things are much the same as the WRT32X's predecessor. There's the same 1.8GHz processor, the same dual band radio setup featuring N600 and AC2600 connectivity, the same gigabit Ethernet, the same 512MB RAM. This is not, in any way, a bad thing: the WRT3200 is an awesome router, so this is built on a solid foundation.
The real changes are, mostly, logical. There's a shiny new firmware with a gamer-geared interface, which pushes performance to the front. And there's the aforementioned Killer Prioritization Engine, which does a little logical pushing and pulling to ensure that, if you connect to the WRT32X with a compatible device from the likes of Alienware, Gigabyte or Razer, your games get absolute priority on the network. Your family can keep downloading, you can even upload a stream on the same machine; everything else will only be dealt with once the gaming's done.

One of the advantages of the Electra jailbreak tool over LiberiOS jailbreak is that it comes with Substitute, a Cydia substrate alternative which was originally developed by Comex. So it allows users who have jailbroken their iOS devices with Electra jailbreak toolkit to install and use jailbreak tweaks that are compatible with iOS 11.

You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history.
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Chinese tech giant's research unit says its deep neural network model is the first to beat humans in the Stanford Question Answering Dataset, but is listed first alongside Microsoft on the latest rankings.

Researchers Neil Gandal, JT Hamrick, Tyler Moore, and Tali Oberman have written a fascinating paper on Bitcoin price manipulation. Entitled "Price Manipulation in the Bitcoin Ecosystem" and appearing in the recent issue of the Journal of Monetary Economics the paper describes to what degree the Bitcoin ecosystem is controlled by bad actors . To many it's been obvious that the Bitcoin markets are, at the very least, being manipulated by one or two big players. "This paper identifies and analyzes the impact of suspicious trading activity on the Mt. Gox Bitcoin currency exchange, in which approximately 600,000 bitcoins (BTC) valued at $188 million were fraudulently acquired," the researchers wrote. "During both periods, the USD-BTC exchange rate rose by an average of four percent on days when suspicious trades took place, compared to a slight decline on days without suspicious activity. Based on rigorous analysis with extensive robustness checks, the paper demonstrates that the suspicious trading activity likely caused the unprecedented spike in the USD-BTC exchange rate in late 2013, when the rate jumped from around $150 to more than $1,000 in two months.

When Steve Jobs showed off the MacBook Air to a collective gasp from the tech industry one decade ago, nobody could yet know its importance as a harbinger of Apple's future.
The original, teardrop-shaped MacBook Air was not long for this world. It was expensive, underpowered, prone to overheating, and came with a fiddly flip-down door that hid its meagre selection of ports.
None of that mattered.
The MacBook Air that Jobs slid with his characteristic flourish out of manila envelope was seemingly designed to be as much an object of lust and technical showpiece as it was a shipping product. Like the now-famous song that came with it, the MacBook Air truly was "a new soul."
Its svelte physique was made possible in part by Apple's innovations in production-scale CNC machining, a practice now widely used but unheard of in consumer products of the day. The bespoke Intel chip whose descendents would later power an avalanche of ultrabooks was, for that moment in time, an unbeatable technological advantage.
Yes, it was Apple's way of saying "shut up about netbooks," but it wouldn't be until the 2010 release of the second-generation Air with better processor options and more ports that the laptop truly came into its own.

If you work in IT you're likely all too familiar with the concept of routine, repetitive tasks which can unnecessarily eat away at your day. Prime example: password resets, which can be a significant time drain. There are certain strategies which can help users remember their passwords and when they need changing; password databases like Password Safe and KeePass, Outlook reminders to change passwords before they expire (such as every 60 days), mnemonic strategies to remember complex passwords, and other tips. These should be shared along with whatever else may be helpful for them to use technology to do their jobs.

To start, the researchers first had to gain access to the encrypted video seen by the drone operator. Once they had access to that feed, they used a blinking smart film over a window to create a physical stimulus that impacted the bitrate of the traffic, the release said. This allowed them to determine if the drone was trying to spy through that window. A demo of this technique can be viewed on YouTube .

Later changed to The Cranberries, the band's most successful tracks include Linger (1993), Zombie (1994) - a protest song about bombings that took place in relation to the conflict in Northern Ireland - as well as No Need To Argue (1994) and To the Faithful Departed (1996).

This year's Doodle features an illustration of a young girl sitting on her father's shoulders in a crowd. Created by guest artist Cannaday Chapman in collaboration with the Black Googlers Network, the Doodle depicts a young girl enthralled by Martin Luther King Jr.'s words.

Vitalik Buterin is a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine who has been involved in the Bitcoin community since 2011, and has contributed to Bitcoin both as a writer and the developer of a fork of bitcoinjs-lib, pybitcointools and multisig.info, as well as one of the developers behind Egora.
Now, Vitalik's primary job is as the main developer of Ethereum, a project which intends to create a next-generation …

High dynamic range ( HDR ) is a category of video formats available on many new 4K TVs. HDR content has the same resolution as regular 4K video, but each pixel can be assigned a much wider and more granular range of color and light. This lets HDR video appear significantly more detailed, accurate, and lifelike than standard dynamic range video. However, you need an HDR-compatible display, and the content needs to be encoded in an HDR format. The two major formats currently availble are HDR10 and Dolby Vision. While all HDR-compatible TVs support HDR10, not all can display Dolby Vision content, which is how certain services stream HDR videos. If you don't have an HDR television, don't worry; all physical media and streaming services that offer HDR content can display SDR versions of the same material on screens that don't support the format.

In an effort to break my smartphone addiction, I’ve joined a small group of people turning their phone screens to grayscale — cutting out the colors and going with a range of shades from white to black. First popularized by the tech ethicist Tristan Harris, the goal of sticking to shades of gray is to make the glittering screen a little less stimulating.

We found that most community-owned FTTH [fiber-to-the-home] networks charged less and offered prices that were clear and unchanging, whereas private ISPs typically charged initial low promotional or "teaser" rates that later sharply rose, usually after 12 months. We were able to make comparisons in 27 communities. We found that in 23 cases, the community-owned FTTH providers' pricing was lower when averaged over four years. (Using a three year-average changed this fraction to 22 out of 27.) In the other 13 communities, comparisons were not possible, either because the private providers' website terms of service deterred or prohibited data collection or because no competitor offered service that qualified as broadband. We also made the incidental finding that Comcast offered different prices and terms for the same service in different regions.

As such, class action lawsuits against companies was inevitable, and now Apple is facing one of its own, as first reported by MacRumors . Two folks are moving forward with a class action lawsuit against Apple as of right now. Jacqueline Olson and Anthony Bartling filed the lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, on behalf of anyone who purchased an Apple-branded device with an ARM-based processor designed by Apple. That includes any of the A-series processors from the A4 to the current A11 Bionic, which are present in iPhones, iPads, Apple TV units, and the iPod touch lineup.

On the 2019 Avalon, users will be able to interact with CarPlay through the 9-inch capacitive touchscreen. (Despite featuring a standard Qi wireless charger, there’s sadly no support for wireless CarPlay, so you’ll still have to plug in a cable to take advantage of the feature.) The new model also features Toyota’s first integration of smartwatch and Amazon Alexa compatibility through the Toyota Remote Connect, allowing owners to do things like lock or unlock their doors and start their car through Alexa or a smartwatch.

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"This can be attached to a drone along with a GoPro camera in
order to sample whale blow with minimal disturbance to the
whales. This system allowed us to collect samples safely and
reliably, by minimising external contamination such as air and
seawater from outside the blowhol.

In December, Saudi Arabia lifted a 35-year ban on commercial theaters, and this past weekend the first movie screenings were opened to the public. One of the screenings was a double-feature of The Emoji Movie and Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie in the city of Jeddah, Reuters reports .

Walk down any laptop aisle and you'll notice that the selection of laptops has become dramatically thinner and sleeker. Each of these wafer-thin systems represents a new vision for ultraportable computing: a no-compromises laptop light enough that you'll forget it's in your briefcase, with a long-lasting battery that will keep you working even when no power outlet is available. Fast storage, whether by way of a full 128GB or 256GB solid-state drive (SSD) or, more affordably, 32GB to 64GB of eMMC flash, give these ultraportables the ability to resume work in seconds after being idle or asleep for days. Intel's marketing focus has migrated to the convertible-hybrid laptops and detachable-hybrid tablets that it refers to as 2-in-1 devices (see the next section for more information), but ultraportables are still a distinct category.

"I don't think it's up to one person [to save Uber]," she told CNN's Poppy Harlow in the latest Boss Files podcast episode. "It's not up to me. I'm gonna work my ass off to make sure that I am part of the solution."

Chinese netizens hailed the revival of Google Maps on Monday as the American company's great return to China, where its trademark search and other services have been unavailable since 2010. While Google began offering a translation app for Chinese smartphones in March 2017, the map service reaches far more users as one of Google's best-known offerings. The company has set up a China-specific version of the Google Maps website and introduced a map app for Chinese iPhones. But when users of the app attempt to use its navigation features, they are automatically transferred to an app from AutoNavi, a mapping company owned by Chinese internet leader Alibaba Group Holding.

I heard several demos of what the Sonic Carrier can do including the widening effect of its SuperWide X-Fi mode. The company played a mix of canned demo material and actual movies. The Dolby Atmos material was actually quite impressive for a system without rears. Overhead effects sounded like they were firing from above me (as long as I didn't turn my head). However, like other systems of this type, the effects didn't stretch to the back of the room in the same way a dedicated surround system can.

So, what upgrades are we talking about? The Win 2 goes with a half-inch larger 6-inch display – although it keeps the 1,280 x 720 resolution – and bumps up the processor to an Intel Core m3-7Y30 capable of Intel Turbo Boost up to 2.6GHz (with integrated Intel HD Graphics 615). That’s a solid jump from the previous Atom CPU.

The Anglo-Dutch oil and gas producer will acquire a 44 percent stake in Nashville’s Silicon Ranch Corp., which owns and operates about 100 solar facilities across the U.S. The investment could be as high as $217 million in cash, depending on the company’s performance, making Shell the largest shareholder, according to a statement .

The same was true the following day when I took the camera, plus three lenses, to East London to follow the Thames River footpath. Here I'd also spent serious time considering this location and knew that this part of the river would be lined with industrial buildings, old wooden piers and other urban elements that would translate well to black and white. I carried all my kit in my Manfrotto backpack, meaning that each time I wanted to take a shot, I had to take the camera out of the bag and set it up. It was such a slow way of working that I found myself being unusually critical of every scene I found, only going to the effort of shooting it if I knew I'd get a great result.

Or so we hope. There are so many conspiracy theories in this genre that, if proven true, would bring infinite joy to queer people worldwide. The LGBTQ community has few celebrity queer relationships they can count on for gossip — a Kristen Stewart and Stella Maxwell here, a RuPaul and Georges LeBar there. By and large, however, these relationships are stable. They are healthy. They are far below the requisite drama standard for gossip.

So, what exactly do we mean by 'full-frame'? A full-frame camera uses a sensor that's the same size as a single frame of traditional 35mm film, measuring 36 x 24mm. The more popular APS-C sensor size found in most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras measures 22 x 15mm. This means a full-frame sensor has more than 2.5 times the surface area of an APS-C sensor.

The site, which was shut down in early 2017, had collected details from a string of major breaches and made them accessible and searchable for a fee. The man, 27-year-old Jordan Evan Bloom, is due to appear in a Toronto court on Monday to hear charges that as administrator of the site he collected some C$247,000 from the sale of stolen records and associated passwords.

Energous' wireless charging technology, called WattUp, isn't powerful enough to charge a laptop, but it'll keep your phone topped up even as you walk around a room, the company says. The Federal Communications Commission certified both WattUp and a rival called PowerCast in December.

BlackBerry announces Jarvis, a tool for automakers that scans connected car software for security flaws; may be used later in healthcare, industrial automation (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-blackberry-software/blackberry-launches-cybersecurity-software-for-self-driving-cars-idUSKBN1F42LX … http://www.techmeme.com/180115/p17#a180115p17 …

This prototype phone shown by Chinese phonemaker Vivo has no official name, price or sale date. But its virtual home button, which appears only when you need it and then gets out of the way, may be a harbinger of things to come. It's a killer feature that was rumored for both the iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S8 -- neither of which had it. We're clinging to the hope that it finds its way onto the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy S9 .